The present invention relates to holders for wire harnesses and more particularly to such a holder including a length of elastomeric material which supports the wires as they are added to the holder and forms the wires into a bundle of generally circular cross section.
It is common practice in the fabrication of a wire harness to mount a plurality of wire holders on a jig or panelboard along the intended route of the harness. The wires are placed in the various holders as they are run individually between their desired termination points. After completion of the wiring, cable ties or the like are applied to permanently hold the wires in their bundled configuration. It is highly desirable for the wire holders to form the wires into a bundle of circular configuration since a circle offers the smallest periphery for a given enclosed area. If a cable tie was applied adjacent a wire holder which held the bundle in another configuration, after removal from the work holder the bundled wires would be free to assume a circular grouping causing the cable tie to become unacceptably loose.
Commercially available prior art wire retainers which function to form the wires into a circular grouping typically include a base adapted for secure attachment to the panelboard by means of screws or the like, a pair of arms pivotally mounted on the base, and a length of elastomeric material spanning the free ends of the arms and cooperating therewith to form the wires into a generally circular grouping. The weakest component of such retainers is, of course, the elastomeric material which could inadvertently be damaged through contact with a sharp tool or which could lose its resiliency with repeated use thus requiring replacement.
A common shortcoming of the commercially available prior art structures is that the elastomeric material cannot be readily replaced. More specifically, the material is either inaccessible for removal or it is formed into a loop and held by a part of the base thus requiring the time-consuming step of removal of the base from the panelboard before the looped material can be removed and replaced.
In other types of prior art wire retainers, the ends of the elastomeric material are pinned or rivetted to the base with the pin or rivet head disposed very close to the base thus making the replacement of the material difficult if it is at all possible. A further disadvantage of such structures is that the ends of the material are at least partially exposed thereby making them susceptible to accidental separation from their anchoring means.
Another type of wire retainer has been proposed including a unitary molded arm-base structure. A problem attendant to such a molded structure is that if the resilient spring arms are molded thin enough to permit low force insertion of a wire, they have insufficient strength to overcome the resiliency of the elastomeric material which has a propensity to eject a wire previously inserted between the spring arms.
Reference may be made to U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,627,300 and 3,883,929.